'Huge task': board test looms for media icon Buttrose

I believe, I believe, in what she says / Yes I do / I believe, I believe, at the end of the day/ Her magazine'll get me through.

Ita Buttrose's standing in Australian popular culture is perhaps best captured by the fact that beloved 1980s rock band, the Jimmy Barnes-led Cold Chisel, once penned a song about her.

Buttrose - reportedly a fan of the tune - is one of the most decorated figures in Australian media history. But is she the right person to chair one of the nation's most historic and politically sensitive media organisations?

"I think she's fantastic," says Marina Go, the former Dolly editor and current Bauer Media executive who is the chair of the Wests Tigers rugby league club and describes Buttrose as a mentor. "When I first learnt of it, my immediate reaction was she would be a good appointment."

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"Tough" and "capable" are two of the descriptions afforded to Buttrose by multiple media industry figures interviewed for this story. They are qualities she will need if she is in fact appointed chair of the ABC on Tuesday.

The public broadcaster has in recent years been beset by boardroom turmoil and internal dissent, amid unrelenting criticism from sections of Canberra and the commercial media sector, as well as repeated budget cuts.

"It's a huge task," says David Leckie, the former Packer-era TV boss of Nine, and later the Seven Network, who has crossed paths with Buttrose many times over the years. "But one that she is up to."

Graeme Samuel, an experienced businessman and former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman, served with Buttrose on the board of Alzheimer's Australia (now Dementia Australia) and is confident Buttrose would be a good choice for the ABC.

"She has remarkable common sense, objectivity and the courage to challenge and not to buckle under pressure," he says.

"She has all the attributes of an excellent chair, she knows the difference between chairman and executive chairman. She knows how to speak to the most senior people in government and opposition."

There is certainly no doubting Buttrose's media credentials.

Helen McCabe, the former Women's Weekly editor who now runs digital content for Nine (owner of this masthead), described Buttrose as "the most celebrated female journalist in Australian history" when she was inducted into the Melbourne Press Club Hall of Fame in 2017.

"She has had one of the most extraordinary careers in Australian media, there is absolutely nothing she hasn't done," says McCabe.

There is absolutely nothing she hasn't done.

Helen McCabe

"It's almost as though there is nothing more to say about her. Her career and acknowledgement speaks for itself."

Impeccable pedigree?

Buttrose, now 77, started out working in the media industry at the age of 15 as a copy kid for the Women's Weekly.

By 1972, aged 30, she had hit the big time when now-deceased media mogul Kerry Packer appointed her founding editor of Cleo, a new magazine targeted at young women.

Cleo was an edgy title - Buttrose famously ran a nude centrefold of actor Jack Thompson in the first edition, which sold out. The era was captured in Paper Giants, a mini-series that, fittingly, ran on the ABC, and was also a hit.

The Jack Thompson centrefold in Cleo magazine.Credit:Fairfax Media

"She is a good lady, very strong, very tough," says Leckie. "She certainly did a good job running the magazines at ACP [Packer's Australian Consolidated Press]."

After Cleo, Buttrose went on to edit Women's Weekly, and then in 1981 Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper, becoming the first woman to run a major metro masthead in Australia.

Glittering media career aside, Buttrose's ability to run a board - particularly one as political as the ABC's - overseeing a $1 billion budget is more open to debate.

According to official records, Buttrose's first exposure to a corporate board came in 1991 when she was appointed a director of Network Ten, where she served for 15 months.

She has also since served on a string of boards for charities and non-profit medical organisations, including a stint as national president of the then Alzheimer's Australia, and as a director of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, the Smith Family, and AIDS Fundraising Australia.

In 2013 she was appointed Australian of the Year, in part for "using her high profile as a media icon to raise awareness of often ignored societal issues".

Buttrose has also been a prominent TV personality, serving as a panellist on Ten's Beauty and the Beast, and more recently Studio 10, as well as being a commentator over the years for Channel Nine.

Her TV background would no doubt be useful at the ABC. And it might go some way towards explaining her appeal to Morrison, whose taste in media is decidedly mainstream.

Morrison is famously a fan of the singer Tina Arena and the Cronulla Sharks rugby league team.

"I have known Ita for a long time," the Prime Minister said on ABC TV on Monday.

"And I think she's an extraordinary Australian. There have been few people more than Ita that I think have lifted the standards of journalism in this country and I think that says a lot about her character and her abilities."

If the appointment goes ahead, Morrison would be ignoring the recommendations made by an independent panel and global recruitment firm.

However, Morrison confirmed the panel did not put forward any female candidates for the job.

The Coalition has been criticised for its problem with women, so who better to put forward for a high-profile media job than one of the media industry's most trailblazing female figures? One immortalised in song by Jimmy Barnes, no less?

It would be a captain's pick, for sure, but one that is difficult to frame "as a job for the boys". She is not a member of the Liberal Party, and government sources do not know whether she is even sympathetic to their side of politics.

It would certainly be a change of pace for the ABC. The last three chairmen (and they were all men) - Milne, James Spiegelman and Maurice Newman - all came from the corporate and legal spheres.

Despite Milne's interventionist streak, the ABC chair position is not supposed to be a strategic or operational one.

The job is about finding a new managing director to replace Michelle Guthrie, and then steering the board to make sure the ABC adheres to its charter responsibilities.

It is also about absorbing the inevitable criticism that comes from the government of the day. Milne failed to do the latter, and it ultimately cost him his job. That mistake is unlikely to be repeated.

Go praises Buttrose's "high integrity" while McCabe says she is "incredibly considered and informed, and very cool and calm in any situation".

"She will certainly bring a strong sense of journalistic independence [to the ABC]," says McCabe. "And that is something that the organisation will no doubt welcome."